Do I Really Have to Work Today?

Yes, even though it's something like -10 out there but not windy at the moment, I still have to go to work because Mrs. Boss is off on the ski bus.  Even though the school kids don't have to go (they'll probably be in school until almost July 4th making up snow/cold days if this continues; I think they're already at least 2 days in the red), I have to go to keep the world safe from SCUBA diving.  Even though it was a bajillion below zero and blowing like a banshee out there yesterday I had 5 paying customers.  Five.  A. Mazing.  When I drove into the driveway last night all of the snow I shoveled away on Sunday came back on the wind--and brought friends, a lot of 'em.  I didn't get out the shovel to move them again.  I'll wait until it isn't quite so frigid outside.  Damned winter.  Although when I went out (with pants on this time) to top up the birdbath this morning the crescent moon and the morning star were shining so bright I had to pause to take their picture.  Isn't it pretty?

Mrs. Boss left the 2014 Calendar of Events for me to check that the dates were right and they were for a while, from January through April, but from May 1 on she was one day off.  I wonder what reset her for 2013 at that point?  By December I was making a song out of the date numbers, there are a lot of dates in a year.  It was good to have work to do, though, I got to fix a mask lens for a guy and try to convince another guy to buy a mask (unfortunately unsuccessfully, so far).  I like having work to do at work, it makes the day go faster.  One still managed to arrive just as I sat down to eat my lunch.  The way I attract customers with the aroma of my food is a read skill.  It's almost infallible.  I can be sitting there for an hour or more with no phone call and no people, but let me heat up a bowl of soup and, bzzzzt, the buzzer buzzes.  

I did get the latest Sockupied eMag downloaded to the work computer and had to call Interweave for help getting it to install successfully which ended a full week of frustration.  Turns out about half of the time the file was downloading without the ".exe" on the end so all I had to do was add that to the fileamen and ZOOP! there it was.  Tsk.  Why couldn't the customer service person that emailed me last Thursday tell me that?  Huh?  At least it let me copy it to my jump drive and then transfer it to my laptop.  For some reason it won't download to the laptop, keeps getting kicked off or something, so I have to install it at work and then transfer it.  Now I have the new sock making info and pretty pictures.

January 28--Charles Cromwell Ingham, A Family Group.  They looked so normal, so happy in the painting, like everything was just fine, but it wasn't.  They knew it, their families knew it, and soon the whole town would know it.  Rita and Jeremiah sat in their sober black, their faces unlined and serene, but if you look closely at Baby Miranda you see the bleakness her parents were so good at hiding.  There was no money to pay the painter.  The Bible under Jeremiah's right hand was the ramrod he used to bend her to his will, she had no family nearby, and the others in the community had seen enough of Jeremiah that no one came to her aid.  Miranda was the sixth child born alive in the last eight years and the only one to live past six months.  He blamed her.

Well, that's cheerful on this bitter cold day.  I have to go get ready for work, get bundled up so that I look normal but don't freeze my tits off sitting at the desk.  There will be wool.

--Barbara